€218.00 for 1 Night
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Looking for help choosing or for a property we don't list? Message our Private Rates Concierge on WhatsApp for member rates and insider knowledge on the right stay
€218.00/ Night
24/7 Support
Looking for help choosing or for a property we don't list? Message our Private Rates Concierge on WhatsApp for member rates and insider knowledge on the right stay
A 28-room boutique hotel on Barcelona's waterfront, in the building that held Picasso's first studio, with a rooftop pool and bar overlooking Marina Port Vell.
Collections:
Award Winner 2017
World’s Best City Hotel
Free extra on us
A discounted Tour of the city for guests.
Need To Know
- 28 rooms and suites, the largest the two-bedroom Grand Suite Mediterraneo, many sea-facing
- Set in an 1846 building whose façade is by Francesc Daniel Molina, architect of the Plaça Reial
- The building held Picasso's first studio from 1896; the restored studio window survives on the rooftop
- A sixth-floor rooftop with a plunge pool and the Informal bar and restaurant over Port Vell
- Mediterranean cooking, a Le Nine lounge bar and a Picasso library
- On Passeig de Colom by Marina Port Vell; about 20 minutes from Barcelona airport
Check in - Check out
Check in from 14:00; check out before 12:00.
We Love
- The history — the building held the first studio of a teenage Picasso, where he painted Science and Charity; the original studio window survives, restored, on the rooftop facing the sea.
- The rooftop — a sixth-floor terrace with a plunge pool and the Informal bar over Marina Port Vell, the Gothic rooftops behind and the Mediterranean ahead; the spot for sunset.
- The location — where the Gothic Quarter meets the waterfront on Passeig de Colom, steps from the cathedral, El Born and La Rambla, with the marina and the sea at the door.
- The design — interiors by Eva Martínez mixing steel, wood and Barcelona's traditional hydraulic tiles, the tile motifs reworked as headboards depicting different quarters of the city.
- The baths — deep, boat-shaped tubs big enough for two in many of the rooms, a quiet nod to the marina below and one of the nicest things about a room here.
Key Features
Book Your Stay at Serras Barcelona
€218.00 for 1 Night
Location
Address
The Serras, Passeig de Colom 9, Barcelona 08002
Travel Info
The Serras sits on Passeig de Colom, where the Gothic Quarter meets Marina Port Vell, a short walk from the cathedral, El Born and La Rambla. Barcelona–El Prat airport is about 20 minutes by taxi. The old centre is walkable; valet parking is offered, useful where driving is hard.
Nearby Places
Fly into Barcelona Airport (BCN) and the hotel is a 20-minute taxi ride.
16km
Last Updated: 2026-06-13
Expert Review
Origins
The Serras stands on Passeig de Colom, on the seam where Barcelona's Gothic Quarter meets the water at Marina Port Vell. The building dates from 1846, its façade the work of Francesc Daniel Molina — the architect of the city's celebrated Plaça Reial, just off La Rambla — and for most of its life it was simply one of the grand frontages lining the old waterfront.
Its claim on history is artistic. In 1896 a fifteen-year-old Pablo Picasso, newly arrived from Málaga, was given his first studio on the top floor of this building by his father; it was here, in 1897, that he painted Science and Charity, the ambitious early canvas that marked the start of his career and now hangs in the Museu Picasso a few streets away. The studio's original window survives, restored, on the hotel's rooftop — the same frame onto the same Mediterranean horizon that the young Picasso looked out on — and the Nine lounge below keeps a small library devoted to him.
The hotel that fills the building today opened in 2015, the first five-star on this stretch of waterfront, with interiors by the Barcelona designer Eva Martínez — steel, wood and the city's traditional hydraulic tiles, the tile motifs reimagined as headboards mapping different quarters of Barcelona. It is small and deliberately so: twenty-eight rooms and suites, a sixth-floor rooftop with a plunge pool over the marina, a Mediterranean kitchen overseen by a Michelin-starred chef, and the kind of personal service — airport transfers, a concierge who knows the city — that a hotel this size can actually deliver.
Top Secret
The best of the hotel is on the roof, and it is easy to miss the detail that makes it special. Among the loungers and the plunge pool, facing the sea, stands the restored original window of Picasso's first studio — the very frame through which the teenage artist looked out at the port while he painted. Ask the staff to point it out, settle in with a drink as the harbour turns gold, and you are looking at more or less exactly what he saw: the same light, the same masts, the same Mediterranean horizon, a century and a quarter on.
The Review
The Serras is among the most appealing places to stay in central Barcelona, and it has a backstory few hotels can match: the building held the first studio of a teenage Picasso, who painted Science and Charity here in 1897. That sense of place runs through it. Set in an 1846 building by the architect of the Plaça Reial, on Passeig de Colom where the Gothic Quarter meets Marina Port Vell, it was reworked in 2015 by designer Eva Martínez into a crisp, modern interior built on steel, wood and Barcelona's traditional hydraulic tiles, with just twenty-eight rooms and suites.
It is small enough to feel personal and well placed to feel central. The rooms are soundproofed and well equipped, many with sea views and deep boat-shaped baths; the service is genuinely attentive, the kind that arranges transfers and dinner reservations without fuss. The heart of the hotel is the rooftop — a plunge pool and the Informal bar and restaurant over the marina, with Mediterranean cooking overseen by Michelin-starred chef Marc Gascons — and there is a library lounge, the Nine, devoted to Picasso below.
It suits couples and design-minded travellers who want intimacy, art and a waterfront address over the scale of a grand hotel, and families are well looked after with connecting rooms and larger suites. The location is hard to beat: the cathedral, El Born and La Rambla within a walk, the marina at the door, and the beach not far beyond. For a small, characterful luxury hotel in the old city, with a genuine piece of art history attached, there are few to touch it in Barcelona.
